A number of people have reached out to me to ask me to write about it.  Unfortunately, it’s outside my area of experience and I don’t have time to research it. I’m generally familiar with the issue, as it has came up from time to time when I was in private law practice, but only generally.

I know enough to spot the issues, but not enough to provide the answers.  So here’s my issue spotting:

Lerner gave a fair amount of information in the first couple of minutes of her testimony, including her personal background, her background at the IRS, who she supervises, and whether she has complied with the law with regard to those duties.

It’s not that Lerner professed innocence, it’s that she opened up the topics related to the innocence.

More important, the critical moment was not her introductory statements, but that she testified after invoking the privilege, when she attested that written answers provided to the Inspector General, and then given to Congress, were her answers. 

It comes at 3:00 in this video:

Q. So it is your testimony that as far as your recollection, that is your response.

A. That’s correct.

So having invoked the privilege against self-incrimination, Lerner nonetheless gave testimony as to her previous answers that were part of the hearing record and which covered the very issues the Committee was considering, and the underlying facts regarding her claimed innocence. That, to me, is very significant.

So those are the issues I’ve spotted. But I don’t have the answer to whether that was a waiver.

For the answer I’ll defer to Alan Dershowitz (video via Hot Air):

That analysis seems right to me. Based on my general understanding.

Thumbs Up for comments are back.

Bad news.

Thumbs Down for comments are back.

It proved to be a formidable challenge, for a variety of reasons, after the plug-in went wild in the wake of the Great Blog Meltdown of March 2013, and After-Meltdown Tremor.

You voted to bring it back, and we have.  (Fingers crossed.)

Thanks to Andy LoCascio and his team at Sound Strategies, our new technical consultants, who have been known to perform miraculous feats.

In a stunning development that calls into question the basic willingness of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to accept any peace agreement with the Jewish state, TheTower.org has obtained a hand-drawn map created by Abbas documenting a 2008 peace proposal outlined to him by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – which Abbas rebuffed – and has confirmed the existence and details of the settlement offer in an exclusive interview with Olmert.

Given the chaos sweeping the Middle East since the September 2008 offer was rejected by Abbas, and the security deterioration on multiple Israeli borders, Olmert’s offer contains elements likely to be seen as essentially incompatible with Israel’s fundamental security requirements….

With remarkable candor, Olmert says that under his plan, Israel would have agreed to swap areas on Israel’s side of the Green Line, while Israel would have retained key communities built after Israel’s victory in 1967. The Israeli territory to be ceded would have been near Afula and Beit She’an in the country’s north, an area north of Jerusalem and in the Judean Desert, in the Lachish region, and adjacent to the Gaza Strip. An underground tunnel would have connected Gaza and the West Bank.

Olmert also shares details about his approach, under which no nation would have asserted complete sovereignty over what is known as the Holy Basin. Instead a five-member group would have overseen the areas including Jerusalem’s Old City, the Mount of Olives, and the City of David, just beyond the Old City walls. Ehud Barak had agreed in principle to cede sovereignty over the area during the 2000 Camp David Summit.

The handwritten map may be new, but the story is old.

I addressed this Olmert offer in the context of Obama’s statement in May 2011 that Israel return to the pre-1967 (1949 armistice) borders, `do you want to keep floating forever – like an astronaut in space – or do you want a state?’:

But the key thing is that the Palestinians, including Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), walked away from what Olmert told them was the best deal they would ever get and one they would not see again for another 50 years:

“He (Abbas) promised me the next day his adviser would come. But the next day Saeb Erekat rang my adviser and said we forgot we are going to Amman today, let’s make it next week. I never saw him again.”Olmert believes that, like Camp David a decade earlier, this was an enormous opportunity lost: “I said `this is the offer. Sign it and we can immediately get support from America, from Europe, from all over the world’. I told him (Abbas) he’d never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years. I said to him, `do you want to keep floating forever – like an astronaut in space – or do you want a state?’ …

So rather than proving the wisdom of Obama’s Middle East speech, this history proves the essential misunderstanding of the problem. Putting the 1967 borders on the table as the starting point with no other concessions emboldens the Palestinians to wait, because the deal will get better.

The problem is not that Israel is not willing to trade land for peace — even more land than anyone is willing to say in public — it is that the Palestinians want the land but not the peace.

Who knows if Olmert could have accomplished this deal if Abbas had accepted.  The deal Olmert offered was insane from an Israeli perspective — but it tested whether there was a real peace partner on the other side. There wasn’t. Abbas and the Palestinian leadership walked away.

It’s always been about the refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state.

When the Palestinians embrace people like Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad, with his theories that the Holocaust was a Zionist-Nazi collaboration, and the BDS movement embraces Islamists and other Jew haters, and there is anti-Jewish incitement in the Palestinian press, the refusal to accept Israel becomes an intellectual foundation of the Palestinian negotiating position from which Palestinian leaders dare not deviate.

It’s never been about land for peace, at most it’s been about land as a stepping stone to Israel’s demise. Until that truly changes, nothing else will change.

We recently recounted that amidst the reports of the death and destruction caused by the tornado in Oklahoma on Monday, Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) gave a speech that included references to Oklahoma twisters in a rant against Republicans challenging the theory of man-made global warming.

My junior senator, Barbara Boxer, Chair of Senate Environment & Public Works Committee) also took to the Senate floor and invoked the Oklahoma tornadoes in her speech on global warming (hat-tip, Anthony Watts).

“This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather. Not just hot weather. But extreme weather. When I had my hearings, when I had the gavel years ago. -It’s been a while – the scientists all agreed that what we’d start to see was extreme weather. And people looked at one another and said ‘what do you mean? It’s gonna get hot?’ Yeah, it’s gonna get hot. But you’re also going to see snow in the summer in some places. You’re gonna have terrible storms. You’re going to have tornados and all the rest. We need to protect our people. That’s our number one obligation and we have to deal with this threat that is upon us and that is gonna get worse and worse though the years.”

[Boxer] also plugged her own bill, cosponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders that would put a tax on carbon. “Carbon could cost us the planet,” she said. “The least we could do is put a little charge on it so people move to clean energy.”

Interestingly, Whitehouse is now taking a page from the Obama Administration’s defense action template. After being strongly criticized for his appalling remarks, the senator now claims complete and total ignorance of the Oklahoma disaster.

“Tragically and unbeknownst to the senator at the time, a series of tornadoes were hitting Oklahoma at the same moment he gave his remarks,” the spokesman said. “Senator Whitehouse regrets the timing of his speech and offers his thoughts and prayers to the victims of yesterday’s storms and their families, and he stands ready to work with the senators from Oklahoma to assist them and their constituents in this time of need.”

I will simply point out the pertinent text from that speech: “When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover.”

Yeah, sure.

On “Watts Up With That“, Antony Watts has a poll asking readers for their opinion of the matter. It looks like informed people think his apology is as real as the science behind global warming.

The White House and the State Department were on the brink of serious humiliation before an election. They had screwed up royally. What were they going to say? They had to figure it out and at some point they decided to lie, downplaying the heavily armed terrorist attack and Ansar al Sharia and placing the blame on a video trailer almost no one saw.

To blogress, Bookworm, it’s the IRS scandal.

The IRS scandal, by contrast, is a direct attack on the American people. Right now, Progressives throughout America are pretending that this scandal doesn’t matter: “Obama wasn’t involved.” “Tea Partiers had it coming because they’re all corrupt.” “Obama would have won the election anyway.” “It was just a coincidence that the only groups that had their applications scrutinized, sometimes for years, were politically conservative. It means nothing that, when one group changed its name to sound Progressive, its application was approved in only three weeks.” “This is just a bureaucratic snafu.” “It’s a few rogue agents in Ohio.”

But when discussing politics with my 19 year old, he had a different take. He thinks that the AP scandal is the worst.

Benghazi, he argues, is in the past. People won’t get exercised by something that happened eight months ago. (I disagree slightly. The mistakes that led to Behghazi came from the administration’s flawed view of the Middle East and those remain in place. Those who don’t learn from history …)

The IRS scandal has been contained for now. There will be fall guys (and gals) but corrections will be made. Though it’s an abuse of power it is from an agency that has a negative relationship to most Americans. People aren’t overly outraged.

However the AP scandal has expanded. Now it includes James Rosen too. And maybe Sharyl Attkisson. If three news organizations have been targeted, it suggests a government that resents criticism and is fighting the criticism by expanding its power. A government hungry for power is never satisfied.

This is a continuing threat to our freedoms – regardless of the party in power.

It is also a threat to a free press, which may be why the New York Times has come to Rosen’s defense.

When the NY Times critcizes you for going after Fox News, the wheels have come off. hotair.com/archives/2013/… by @edmorrissey

— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) May 22, 2013

A threat to one’s own power and influence can focus the mind.

This supports another part of my son’s argument. Republicans have a better chance politically by criticizing the Justice Department over its intimidation of journalists, because it is a cause that might actually gain traction in the mainstream media.

When my son argued that the AP scandal is the worst of this administration, he’s not just making the case on account of its severity, but also on the Republicans’ ability to benefit politically from the administration’s overreach.

More at Liberal Conspiracy (h/t @sethmnookin):

Just prior to being killed, the man, identified as Ibragim Todashev, reportedly confessed to involvement in the 2011 slayings of three men in Waltham, Massachusetts, one of whom had been a friend of deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  CBS News is reporting that Todashev also implicated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in those slayings.

It all began Wednesday morning with the following press release from the FBI:

The FBI is currently reviewing a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent. Based on preliminary information, the incident occurred in Orlando, Florida during the early morning hours of May 22, 2013. The agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers, and other law enforcement personnel were interviewing an individual in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual. During the confrontation, the individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening injuries. As this incident is under review, we have no further details at this time.

As more details emerged throughout the day, it was revealed that Todashev was a Chechen who resided in Boston at the time of the 2011 killings.  He was said to have been an acquaintance of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and of the victims of the 2011 killings.

From CBS News:

Todashev lived in the Boston area at the time of the killings and was friends with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a shootout with authorities in the days after the April 15 marathon attack. It’s unclear what kind of a relationship Todashev had with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who remains in federal custody awaiting trial.

Earlier, CBS News senior correspondent John Miller reported that Todashev was a mixed-martial-arts fighter. Fighting was at least one interest that Todashev shared with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was once a boxer.

Miller also reported that Todashev had been to Chechnya before and was scheduled to return to Chechnya this week but canceled his flight.

The slayings in Waltham had been the subject of renewed interest after the Boston bombings.  New questions emerged after it was discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been friends with one of the slain victims, Brendan Mess, and had reportedly been “acting strangely” after the incident at the time.  The victims, two of whom were Jewish, were murdered on September 11, 2011.  Once Tsarnaev was identified as one of the suspects in the bombings, investigators began reconsidering the possibility of his involvement in the 2011 murders.

A Waltham investigator who called the murders “the worst bloodbath I have ever seen in a long law enforcement career” said Tsarnaev has now proven he had the propensity for the type of violence that unfolded two years ago.

“There was no forced entry, it was clear that the victims had let the killer in. And their throats were slashed right out of an al Qaeda training video. The drugs and money on the bodies was very strange,” the investigator said.

Wednesday’s shooting occurred as agents were questioning Todashev at his apartment in Orlando, Florida.  Authorities are awaiting further details as they gather additional facts pertaining to the incident, according to an Orlando-area FBI spokesman.

CNN reported some of the available details on the status of the investigation:

Ibragim Todashev attacked the FBI agent who shot him after he had confessed to a direct role in the 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, a federal law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the case told CNN on Wednesday. Investigators are awaiting test results to determine whether Todashev’s DNA was found at the Massachusetts triple murder scene and whether DNA of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev — an acquaintance of Todashev — also was found there.

Law enforcement personnel had apparently been investigating Todashev for about a month, according to CNN.

Officials say Todashev was “about to sign a statement” confessing to his and Tsarnaev’s alleged roles in the 2011 slayings before he was shot.

At this time, sources said “authorities have no evidence tying Todashev to last month’s deadly terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon that the Tsarnaev brothers are accused of carrying out,” according to CBS News.

More to follow.

Mayor Bloomberg went on a spitting-mad rant against a city cab-fleet boss who won a court victory over Hizzoner’s planned “Taxi of Tomorrow” — vowing to “destroy your f–king industry” when he leaves office, The Post has learned.

A fuming Bloomberg made the threat against Taxi Club Management CEO Gene Freidman at Madison Square Garden’s private 1879 Club during last Thursday’s Knick playoff game, a witness said yesterday.

“It was like Gene had kidnapped his child. He used the f-word twice,” the witness said.

Freidman confirmed the blow-up to The Post, and said Bloomberg’s tirade included the warning that, “After January, I am going to destroy all you f–king guys.”

That’s bad news for Bloomberg’s political enemies, who could all become targets once the revenge-minded billionaire has nothing but time on his hands.

Bloomberg says he doesn’t remember the incident. Capital NY Reports:

Friedman also happens to be a member of the Greater New York Taxi Association, whose recent court victory may well permanently undermine the mayor’s Taxi of Tomorrow program.

Today, Bloomberg claimed not to remember the episode.

“The only thing I remember from that night, there was a court,” said the mayor on Wednesday at a school in East Harlem. “It was the court in the middle of Madison Square Garden. And the Knicks won. It was a great game. And I had a great time. It’s what I remember from that night.”

Bloomberg, however, did remember why it is he’s so frustrated with medallion owners, an entrenched industry that’s successfully resisted his reform efforts at every turn, including his bid to create a new fleet of taxis for the outer boroughs.

“Number one, we have to get taxi service for four and a half boroughs that are not taken care of,” he said. “What a disgrace. You get into a taxi and it won’t take you to 80 percent of our city. What kind of a city is that?”

“We also have taxis that don’t have all the facilities we want,” he continued, referring to his Taxi of Tomorrow program, which would usher in a new fleet of New York City taxis, complete with passenger airbags, reading lights, and ergonomic seats for drivers.

Who you gonna believe?

Reader Poll open until 5 p.m. Eastern on May 23, 2013:

But I think it is more than that.

This is what we see in Syria.

A very up close and personal bloodletting and then triumphal braggadocio.

Like the Syrian rebel fighter who ate his enemy’s heart on video. And the very personal violence visited on captives from both sides.

Except that it happened in South London.

The BBC reported sources had told them the men were shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they carried out the attack and had filmed carrying it out.

One witness, called James, told LBC radio: “We saw clearly two knives, meat cleavers, they were big kitchen knives like you would use in a butcher’s, they were hacking at this poor guy, we thought they were trying to remove organs from him.”

“These two guys were crazed, they were not there, they were just animals. They then dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road.

“They took 20 minutes to arrive, the police – the armed response.”

I think Ben Domenech gets it right:

This is what a society in collapse looks like. vlt.tc/vem

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) May 22, 2013

(more videos and photos at LiveLeak)

Update: Drew M proposes another analogy, Ramallah 2000:

Update 5-23-2013 – 10 Things Worse Than Eating a Dead Man’s Heart.

Weiner did so by way of a video that was posted in the early hours of the morning.

“Look, I made some big mistakes,” he says in the video. “And I know I let a lot of people down. But I’ve also learned some tough lessons. I’m running for mayor because I’ve been fighting for the middle class and those struggling to make it my entire life. And I hope I get a second chance to work for you.”

The NY Post reports that the video was actually supposed to be released later in the day.

The video — which came out just a few days short of the second anniversary of the day Weiner tweeted a sext of his bulging undies — ends with a logo: “Anthony Weiner for Mayor.”

Sources told The Post that the oddly timed video was legitimate, but that campaign staffers intended for the announcement to come out later today.

The video was posted on a campaign Web site and was then taken down, and then put back up. It also could be seen on YouTube.

But not everyone believes Weiner deserves a second chance.

The Daily Beast was out Tuesday with a scathing article on Weiner’s character flaws that go well beyond his creepy sexting habit.

Here’s a guy who regularly condescended to every member of Congress but whose intellectual talents were such that he originally aspired to be a weatherman. In Congress, he was the political equivalent of a minor celebrity, famous mostly for being famous: in 12 years, he was the lead sponsor of one bill. He narrowly won his first race, for a seat on the New York City Council, after anonymously sending voters race-baiting fliers. That’s never a pretty sight, but considering he did it immediately after the Crown Heights riots, it puts him in the same slime bucket where anti-Semitic tax cheat Al Sharpton wallows.

The article also highlighted examples of Weiner’s hypocrisy.

His nascent campaign has struggled to attract marquee political strategists, as it has faced the rejection of many potential recruits and instead hired Danny Kedem, a 30-year-old with little experience in New York, as a campaign manager.

“Secretary Clinton knows all of the candidates, she has worked with many of them, and is close with many of them, so won’t be weighing in one way or the other,” Hillary Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement to POLITICO.

Likewise, Bill Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna said, “President Clinton has too many friends in this race who have been good to him and his family. He wishes them all well, but won’t be getting involved.”

Dear Professor Jacobson:

I’m among your many grateful readers, but at this time, the Democrats are like Thomas Crown in the flick, “The Thomas Crown Affair,” who created a distraction over here, while over there, he was stealing a multimillion dollar painting.

But in this case, it’s a total transformation of the American people, by immigration law changes to aid and abet the non-enforcement we’ve had for decades.  All these abuses of power converging at this time are almost COMPLETELY distracting everyone who could bring pressure to bear to prevent the enactment of new law which without question – without question – will alter our demographics and governing philosophy to the point of no return.

I hope you’ll consider going in a new direction.

My response was:

I don’t consider the current fights irrelevant either in themselves or as to immigration. In fact, I think they are quite connected, and it’s possible to fight all at once.

To which she replied:

You may be right. But the bill in the Senate is doing, as they say, famously!

Thanks for the reply. ;^)))

Karen makes a very good point.

Key Republicans have buckled under. The Senate will pass the bill right under our noses.

It is a bad bill. I’ve written against it many times. A group of prominent conservatives recently signed a letter pointing out the deficiencies:

We have a variety of concerns; some of us share only one, others share all. Among these concerns are that the bill:

* Is bloated and unwieldy along the lines of Obamacare or Dodd-Frank;

* Cedes excessive control over immigration law to an administration that has repeatedly proven itself to be untrustworthy, even duplicitous;

* Legalizes millions of illegal immigrants before securing the borders, thus ensuring future illegal immigration;

* Rewards law breakers and punishes law enforcement, undermining the rule of law;

* Hurts American job-seekers, especially those with less education;

* Threatens to bankrupt our already strained entitlement system;

* Expands government by creating new bureaucracies, authorizing new spending, and calling for endless regulations;

* Contains dangerous loopholes that threaten national security;

* Is shot through with earmarks for politically connected interest groups;

* Overwhelms our immigration bureaucracy, guaranteeing widespread fraud.

Reforming our immigration system is an important priority. But S.744 is such a defective measure that it would do more harm than good.

The Gang of 8 bill, if it passes, will go down in history as a mistake as disastrous as Obamacare.  It must be stopped.

Democrats are playing the long game.  Republicans in Congress are acting like scared cats playing a short game for 2014 and 2016.

Update 8:10 p.m. – My back and forth with Karen was last night, but Greg Sargent at WaPo, a liberal blogger with deep Democratic sources, was thinking along the same line in his morning post today, As conservatives celebrate scandal-mania, immigration reform marches forward:

The celebratory tone among Republicans and conservatives caught up in Beltway scandal-mania continues this morning. But the real story is that behind all the hoopla, immigration reform continues to march forward, with conservatives suffering one defeat after another in their efforts to derail it. And that means the day is fast approaching when House Republicans will have to decide whether they are going to pass reform and suffer the consequences from their base, or take the blame for killing it….

This caps a period in which far right Republican Senators introduced amendment after amendment designed to undermine the core of reform, efforts that were slapped down by a bipartisan group of Senators, demonstrating that the coalition behind real reform seems to be holding….

The prospects for passing the bill out of the House are uncertain, to put it mildly. But some Dems think all the scandal mania actually improves the prospects for immigration reform. As one Dem remarked to me, by sucking up all the right’s energy and attention, it could distract conservatives just enough to sneak immigration reform past them.

I don’t know if that will prove true or not, but that dynamic does seem to be one that pro-reform GOP Senators are trying to use to their advantage. Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, for instance, go before the cameras and rail about Obama’s scandalous, Nixonian conduct, then turn around and do the hard work — along with Mr. Amnesty himself, Chuck Schumer — of moving immigration reform past one conservative hurdle after another.

In other words, the people using the scandals to maximum advantage are not the Democrats, but McCain, Graham, Rubio, etc.

[Hearings now adjourned]

The moment when she invokes 5th Amendment:

Lerner: I have not broken any laws; I have not violated any IRS regs; I have not done anything wrong #IRShearing

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) May 22, 2013

Lerner full appearance:

After she gave an opening statement and defended herself, Lerner refused to testify and was dismissed from the hearing:

And they want the #IRS to enforce #Obamacare? twitpic.com/csfo8t

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) May 22, 2013

Rep Stephen Lynch suggests special counsel may be necessary re #IRS scandal, if witnesses continue to stonewall. “There will be hell to pay”

— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesNRO) May 22, 2013

“You don’t get to tell your side of the story” and then refuse to answer questions. -Rep Gowdy (R-SC), a former prosecutor

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) May 22, 2013

MT @katiepavlich “We conducted an audit of the IRS, not an investigation” -IG George — very important — NEVER has been investigation #IRS

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) May 22, 2013

Shulman: It wasn’t my fault…makes excuses, playing dumb.Cummings: “That’s simply not good enough.” #IRS

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) May 22, 2013

Schulman: “I have no memory of having knowledge of what was on the list.” #IRS

— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesNRO) May 22, 2013

“It is possible that criminal may have occurred, but it is too early” at this point to determine that. -George #IRShearing

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) May 22, 2013

(I’ll limit this to the discussion of unsigned editorials, not op-eds.)

.@ejdionne has it exactly backward. This is not a crisis of democracy, it’s a crisis of authority. washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-di…

— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) May 20, 2013

On May 17, the editors hoped, IRS shake up had better be thorough:

As for motivations, IRS officials have insisted that the agency saw a big influx of applications beginning in 2010 and that its targeting was just an inappropriate shortcut to sort through them. Yet an IRS letter to the inspector general also cited pressure from “the public, media, watchdog groups and members of Congress” to investigate specific 501(c)(4) groups as a factor in its decision making. Does that mean political pressure might also have influenced IRS staff?

Regardless of the origins of the policy, the result for conservative organizations was a hellishly long application process — months, even years. Some were lucky enough only to have to wait. Others had to answer invasive and unnecessary questions about the political affiliations of officers or the activities of those in event audiences. It’s little surprise that since 2009 many more groups with “progressive” in their titles obtained nonprofit status than those with “tea party” in their names.

At seemingly every level in the IRS, leadership failed. After senior managers found out about the targeting, why didn’t they demand that any more changes to the criteria used to sort out applications require their approval? Instead, lower-level staffers were able to revert to targeting after they had been told to stop.

(As for political pressure, read Hot Air.)

On May 18, the editors acknowledged Justice didn’t follow its own rules in AP case:

Alas, that law did not pass, and there’s little prospect that it will anytime soon. So Mr. Obama’s support for it is at best cold comfort and at worst a transparent diversion. The issue remains what Justice did and whether it was consistent with existing legal authority — which consists of the First Amendment and a long-standing department policy designed to prevent violations of it.

That policy clearly says that federal prosecutors will give press organizations prior notice of pending phone-record subpoenas unless doing so would pose a “clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.” Generally, that has been taken to mean a threat that records would be destroyed, but no such threat has been suggested in this case — and none seems likely to have existed, given the fact that the service providers, not the AP itself, had possession of the records.

In a letter to the AP, Deputy Attorney General James Cole invoked the “substantial threat” exception, but he offered no specifics to back it up. He did note that the department had exhausted alternative means of fact-gathering, as its rules require, and alluded to the serious harm done by the alleged leak. Neither amounts to a reason for what appears to be a pretty stark departure from, if not a violation of, the Justice Department’s own rules.

Even with these two editorials, each showing malfeasance (if not corruption) on the part of two executive branch departments, the editors had already written Obama a new Nixon? Oh, get serious. (Granted, malfeasance isn’t impeachable. Both the Treasury and Justice departments both overreached their constitutional authority, but that didn’t prompt any thoughts that the problem could have come from the top. Here’s how the editorial summed up the scandals:

(1) The Benghazi talking points scandal is no scandal whatsoever. The government failed to anticipate the attack on Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and to protect him and those who died alongside him, but there was no coverup of the failure and no conspiracy to deceive the American people about what had happened.

(2) The broad search of telephone records from the Associated Press in search of a government leaker seems, on all available evidence, to have been a dangerous and unjustified violation of normal Justice Department practice, under which Justice should have negotiated with the AP to narrow the search as far as possible. The administration has yet to offer any justification for this violation. There’s no reason to believe that Mr. Obama knew anything about it, and it’s worth recalling that Republicans clamored for the investigation in the first place. But the president’s unwillingness to condemn it is sadly consistent with his administration’s record of damaging the First Amendment in its ill-advised pursuit of leakers.

(3) The IRS targeting conservative opponents of Mr. Obama for special scrutiny is horrifying and inexcusable. We still don’t have a full picture of how the practice originated, how high in the administration knowledge of it rose and how members of Congress came to be repeatedly misinformed on the subject. But there is so far no evidence of White House knowledge or instigation of the practice.

According to the Post, that’s one case of incompetence and two cases of abuse of power.

(Roger L. Simon shows how Benghazi was more than just incompetence.)

But there’s a fourth editorial, worth noting, Kathleen Sebelius dances on an ethical line:

So far, HHS says it has asked only two entities to donate money — the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and tax firm H&R Block — and neither company is regulated by the agency.

But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) says that Ms. Sebelius has violated the principle that Congress is the body empowered to establish funding levels for the government’s activities and that no administration can short-circuit that process by soliciting and directing donations for things it deems important. In a letter to Ms. Sebelius, he argues that her actions “may violate federal appropriations laws,” and he demands information on how much HHS has coordinated with Enroll America.

The legal question is still murky. The ethical one is less so. The Post’s Sarah Kliff, who broke the story, reports that at least one official in the health-care industry feltpressure to give money and other forms of support to Enroll America. Given that HHS directly controls the markets in which the insurers operate, we would hardly blame them for reading a lot, even too much, into the secretary’s requests and feeling nervous about them. But even if they didn’t, it would have been easy to expect donations to curry favor with Ms. Sebelius.

In order to make the impossibility called ObamaCare work, Sebelius solicited funds outside of her department’s mandate. Depending on how one views Benghazi, this is the third (or fourth) overreach by a cabinet level department. Are these overreaches isolated occurrences or are they part of a pattern?

I believe it is a pattern. Recently, James Taranto explained the mindset that would lead these excesses.

Moral authority entails a moral hazard: the temptation to abuse political and cultural power. Today’s liberal left conceives of itself as being on the side of all that is good, right and reasonable. It caricatures the right as racist, extremist, greedy, dishonest, fanatically religious, prone to violence–and dangerous because, through the Republican Party, it has maintained parity in the political arena. Of the 10 presidential elections since Watergate, each party won 5; and voters haven’t entrusted the Democrats with full control of government for more than two years since the Carter era.

If ordinary politics are a battle between good and evil, then winning becomes an overriding moral imperative. The end justifies the means: Journalists shade or conceal the truth in the service of a “larger truth.” Government restricts political speech in the name of promoting democracy. Administrative agencies perpetrate injustice in the name of “social justice.” That’s how IRS agents could think it was their patriotic duty to help fix an election for the party in power.

These wrongful actions subvert the institutions with whose stewardship the perpetrators have been entrusted. They also undermine the moral authority of those institutions’ leaders.

President Obama and his allies are so certain of their own civic righteousness they see their goals as justifying any means.

The role of the media in these scandals is also amazing. As James Taranto observed:

The current crisis of authority very much includes the news media, which in significant measure have abdicated their guiding principles of impartiality, objectivity and sometimes even accuracy.

Liberal media bias is an old complaint, but the Obama presidency has given it a new and dangerous form. Never has the prevailing bias of the media been so closely aligned with the ideological aims and political interests of the party in power. The American media remain free and independent, or you would not be reading this column. But to a large extent they have functioned for the past few years as if they were under state control.

They denied that Benghazi was a scandal and accused anyone of making that claim of politicizing a tragedy. They ignored claims of conservative groups that they were being unfairly targeted by the IRS.

RT @instapundit: HOW THE PRESS CAN STRIKE BACK: Just start covering Obama—on everything—the way you would if he were a Republican #Toast

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) May 20, 2013

True, now that the election is over some are waking up to the IRS scandal at least. It’s odd that the same folks who believe that democracy is served by having more voters, apparently didn’t think that democracy is served by voters having more information.

And, of course, even now, there are still those who say that administration’s problems are only political.

Look forward to reading tomorrow’s pieces explaining how GOP is overplaying hand by pointing out thatLerner is pleading 5th.

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) May 21, 2013

Nonpartisan observer Charlie Cook: GOP’s hatred of Obama could lead to overreach and backlash: washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-lin…

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) May 21, 2013

As Tea Party groups stage successful rallies at Internal Revenue Service offices nationwide, one California organization is staging a frontal assault on this government behemoth.

One of the largest and most active Tea Party groups in the nation is filing the first of what is expected to be many lawsuits against the government for allegedly singling out conservative organizations.

The NorCal Tea Party Patriots, based in northern California, claim the IRS violated its rights when it either held up or rejected its applications for tax-exempt status….

The NorCal lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Cincinnati. The suit seeks group status for “all conservative and libertarian groups targeted for additional scrutiny” between March 2010 and May 2013. It’s also seeking unspecified money damages for the alleged violation of their constitutional rights and the costs associated with trying to comply with the IRS demands.

The lawsuit is being backed by Citizens for Self-Governance, a group launched by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler.

Click on image to read full complaint.

“It is important that affected citizens get involved in this fight,” said Meckler. “While it is nice that House of Representatives wants to address complaints about this IRS, it is important to remember a few things. The IRS was created by Congress. The IRS is funded by Congress. The idea Congress is going to fix the IRS is laughable. All of this abuse happened on their watch. That is why we need Americans to be engaged.”

Meckler is encouraging everyone whose group applied for non-profit status as a conservative group and was harassed or unduly burdened by requests from the IRS to join the class action lawsuit. For further information, check www.SueTheIRS.com or click HERE to complete the application form directly.

Dawn Wildman, President of San Diego’s SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition whose failures in obtaining a non-profit status with the IRS was recounted here previously, shares more background on the challenges faced by our Northern California compatriots: “NorCal got reamed, with justifications, information requests, and outright bias during their application process. The IRS made it a complete and total nightmare for them to get non-profit status.”

It was only after a local Republican congressman got involved that the NorCal Tea Party Patriots obtained their non-profit status.

So as you look at all the images in front of IRS offices from yesterday, know that the front line of this battle is moving to a courtroom soon!